August 1, 2011

Lost in Translation

I decided to make a new post tonight to explain a couple things about tonight's sheets.

The first is from Heroes of Mana, a DS real-time strategy game from the Seiken Densetsu/Mana series. I've never played it, but I looked up the soundtrack as soon as I heard that Yoko Shimomura composed it. The track is cheerful and bouncy. I've only seen the title translated as "Tenacity," so I included this title in the update, but the original Japanese title is 頑張りやさん (ganbariya-san), where ganbariya appears to mean something like "hard worker" or maybe even "overachiever." I listed the title as "Mr. Hard Worker." If a native Japanese speaker could shed some light on this, I would really appreciate it.

The other piece, from Seiken Densetsu 3, is quite literally called "Ancient Dolphin." [The SD3 OST's track names are almost entirely katakana spelling out English words--in this case: エンシェント・ドルフィン enshiento dorufin]

What dolphin?

This piece is quiet and mysterious. Edited 9/15/11: The sheet music assumes that the first 20 measures will be played a total of three times (one repeat sign and one Da Capo). The directions on the left show which staves to play which times, because the bottommost staff can't be played at the same time as the other two unless you have reeeeally big hands. If you do play the whole thing through like the music says, the piece times in at 4:00 long, which may be a bit much considering the repetitiveness of the piece. If you're going to perform it, you may want to cut one of the repeats out. However, if you're playing it solely for your own enjoyment, you can play it over and over again--I find it kind of relaxing, personally.

The D-A interval at the very beginning in the top staff is meant to be played only on the third time around, in accordance with the "D.C. al fine" instruction. Finally, the F at the end of the fourth measure has an accent over it just to draw your (the pianist's) attention. It's the one measure that doesn't follow the pattern; the other 19 measures with that figure are exactly the same, transposed. I redid the sheet music so you wouldn't need all these silly instructions. The one thing to note is that the F at the ends of measures 4 and 16 is only accented to draw your attention (because it doesn't follow the pattern). I don't intend for you to actually play it more loudly.